


Noticing

by renneroo



Series: Examinations [1]
Category: Emily Owens M.D.
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-08-02
Updated: 2015-08-02
Packaged: 2018-04-12 12:11:55
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 705
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4478801
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/renneroo/pseuds/renneroo
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"She's cute."<br/>"I didn't notice"<br/>There's not much that escapes the notice of Micah Barnes when it comes to all the tiny, moving parts that make up Denver Memorial Hospital.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Noticing

**Author's Note:**

> I recently rediscovered my love of Emily Owens M.D two years after it went off the air. I found this small drabble that I wrote- I think it was the first Emily Owens fic on ff.net, and I was so overjoyed to see how much it had grown since then. After binge-reading the rest of the fics that had been put up, I figured that I would follow the advice of Toni Morrison when she said, "If there's a book you want to read, but it hasn't been written yet, then you must write it". 
> 
> I don't expect there to be many who will stumble across this, maybe a few who discover the show for the first time on Netflix. Given that the series was cancelled early, I think it leaves a lot of room to play with the rough sketches and ideas that those 13 episodes laid out, and I'd like to play around with that. 
> 
> When I found this small piece, which I've edited and tweaked, I decided I wanted to take some of the moments on the show and focus in on these snapshots. For the sake of a medical pun, this is now the first in a series called, "Examinations" as I apologize for a note that is almost as long as the fic.

He should've known better than to try to lie to his mother. It's one of those things that is impossible to get away with, no matter how well you think you've done. She was his mother, and she knew. Micah had always been observant-perhaps it came as a result of his introverted nature. For most of his life, he'd been one of the quiet ones, watching the world spin around him. On the first day of kindergarten. Every party of his college career. Holiday dinners with his family. At Denver Memorial, it allowed him room to watch and to notice and to stay away from the prying eyes and ears that ran the rumor mill.

Of course he had noticed that Emily Owens was cute. However, this observation became peripheral when he realized that above and beyond cute, she was different. The differences between her and all of the other interns made him watch her as closely as he did. Observing her actions as a doctor, specifically his intern, was his priority. He tried to compartmentalize the work-based evaluations of her performance with patients and in the OR, and if occasionally he noticed the smaller details like the little curl that always dangled in front of her face, her subtle grace and poise in tough situations, or the way her sweet and bright smile so often found its mirror image on his own face, he quietly stored them away for himself.

The first time the great and revered Dr. Bandari asked her for a diagnosis, fully expecting to catch the rookie intern off-guard, the wispy blonde smiled at the twelve year-old girl lying in a hospital bed and explained to her, the patient, not the attending physician, what was wrong. From then on, he kept his eyes trained on her just to see what she would do. She wasn't like the other interns that walked the halls with her. She wasn't like any of the interns Micah had ever seen, really.

There was no doubt in his mind that she was both an intelligent and competent doctor. Her compassion, though, made her shine.  There were moments he saw the scared, small girl in her peeking through, the girl hiding in a stairwell with stale sweets. He had seen what Emily Owens was made of though, connecting all the dots of his observations, and he knew she had to know for herself, once and for all, this one thing: Emily Owens had all the makings of a good doctor- and the rest didn't matter. He didn't want or mean to seem judgmental or condescending when he pulled her out of that stairwell. He needed her to pick up and move on- not just because he was her resident but because he needed someone else there to care not for the prestige or privilege of being a surgeon, but for the patients. That's what he saw in her that he didn't see in any of the others. That's what made her different- the selflessness and the compassion that left her holding back tears at the nurse's station when she lost her first patient.

Micah wasn't sure he'd known the kind of frustration he'd felt at bearing witness to anyone and everyone taking advantage of those precious things. Will had this unflagging tendency to take and take in his relationship with Emily with such hesitancy to give. Tyra used her as nurses' bait, and Cassandra used every opportunity to assert herself as a superior physician, portraying Emily's feelings always as flaws. Micah wondered at her ability not to become hard, but he supposed that's how some people function. Instead of building up walls, she would break down and then proceed to put herself together again. She put herself back together by seeing others put back together- like his mother, sitting in her chair receiving chemo treatments, smiling up at the girl who seemed more like an angel as she held a crossword puzzle between them. Of course he'd noticed that she was cute. And gentle. And kind. And a list of other things that left him a little confused- and also full of wonder at who she thought she was to make his world spin that much faster.


End file.
